Player’s Knowledge #
Description & Ambiance: Vekyr is a city of impossible geometry and unsettling stillness, where the architecture feels less like masonry and more like a single, continuous thought frozen in time. The capital is composed of seamless, translucent white stone that curves into soaring, gravity-defying arches and spiraling towers that lack any visible seams, mortar, or tool marks. A traveler is immediately struck by the sensory weight of the silence. The ground does not crunch underfoot, and the air carries a faint, persistent crystalline chime that resonates in the back of the skull.
Government & Public Law: The Telarian is ruled by the At’tunen, a figure of absolute wisdom. Law is practiced as a form of logic where there are no punishments, only re-alignments. Visitors are expected to maintain a kind of mental decorum and public displays of extreme emotion or violence are met with immediate psionic suppression by the local guard.
Exports & Reputation: Telarian has no formal trade agreements and exports nothing by choice. However, the nation is known for Anchor Dust, the powdered remains of depleted crystals which are highly prized by foreign mages for stabilizing volatile spells, and rare Psionic Lexicons. Both are sometimes smuggled out by those lucky enough to visit or by those who have fled the state’s rigid order.
Rumors & Folklore (Unverified):
“The city of Vekyr isn’t built on land; it’s floating three inches off the ground, held up by the collective will of the monks.”
“If you stay in Telarian too long, your own thoughts start to sound like someone else’s voice.”
“The At’tunen hasn’t blinked in three hundred years; they say he’s actually a statue that speaks via telepathy.”
DM’s Lore #
Formal Name: Telarian
Type & Rank: Unified Theocratic-Meritocracy, Regional Psionic Hegemony
Population: 349,297
Language/Name influences: Gith; heavily influenced by monastic titles and philosophical concepts. Surnames are often abandoned for descriptors of mental states.
Synopsis: The Telarian state is a meticulously manicured mental laboratory where three hundred thousand souls unknowingly serve as the living data points for Primus’s grand experiment in artificial societal perfection.
True History & Key Dates:
6,618 BR: Primus forcibly relocates the Githzerai from Limbo to the forests of Volgaard to observe their development without planar chaos.
6,350 BR: The first transition from isolated communes, called Vashin, to a unified philosophical assembly.
The Stellar Rupture: A surge of astral energy intensified the Githzerai’s psionic abilities opening new posibilities for their existing powers.
1,072 AR: The state is formalized under the first At’tunen, a leader who surrenders their identity to become a living avatar of the law.
Internal Conflicts & Secrets:
The Primus Variable: The Arcalis recently discovered that the Eldritch Stele, monolithic pillars once thought to be ancient ruins, are actively transmitting rhythmic, mechanical signals to an unknown destination in the stars. The ruling elite are now obsessed with deciphering these pulses to learn more about their purpose and who or what they are communicating with.
The Calcification: The nation’s thought-shaped architecture has begun to hyper-stabilize, turning cities into rigid, unbreakable prisons where the stone no longer responds to new mental input. Younger Githzerai, frustrated by a world that can no longer be reshaped or improved, have begun intentionally scarring the seamless walls and seeking out the living rot of the untamed wilds just to see something change.
Key NPCs & Power Structure:
Coming soon
Economy & Military Might:
Economy: A closed-loop psionic collective where the standard concept of currency is nonexistent. The state functions on a manifestation-quota system where citizens contribute structured meditation hours to sustain the city’s infrastructure and food supplies. Material wealth is measured only by the possession of Anchor Crystals, rare geological nodes that lessen the mental strain required to hold physical matter in a permanent state.
Military: The Telarian defense is built upon maintaining a permanent state of high-alert along the border. Their forces utilize psionic-tempered weaponry and massive bastions capable of withstanding the concentrated kinetic strikes of Githyanki siege engines and telekinetic bombardments. While they rarely cross into Githyanki territory, their entire military doctrine is designed around a grim, mathematical certainty: any full-scale invasion by their kin will result in the absolute annihilation of both civilizations.
Adventure Hooks:
Political: A high-ranking Zerth has been caught attempting to cross the border to parley with a Githyanki commander. The players are hired to intercept the monk and recover a relic before the Arcalis executes them for compromising the state’s stance of total isolation.
Exploration: A deep-forest commune has gone completely silent, its thought-glass structures melting back into raw sludge. The players must venture into the shifting ruins to retrieve the local Anchor Crystal and discover the source of the problem.
Intrigue: A vital archive has suddenly hardened into a dead, unresponsive block of hyper-dense stone, sealing several scholars within a structure that no longer obeys psionic commands. The players must help rescue the scholars before they perish and the monolith becomes their tomb.